Well.... it's an historical opinion...  some bits are correct, some are not. John's first two lines are not correct, and DX10 responds differently to DX9 "tweaking". Much of that word means changing the sliders slightly here and the, such as not running high GA, when you're primarily flying the NGX out of New York, or pulling clouds back slightly, or road traffic. This impacts frame rate,and it is tweaking, and we all do it for various reasons, but the other tweaking is working with FFTF, BufferPools, that Swap_Wait_Timeout (in another post today), MultiSamplesPerPixel: all of the DX10 Shader patches - all of this is tweaking for usability as well as performance. One cannot tolerate stutters: one cannot tolerate blurries, and they do happen, one cannot tolerate Aliasing issues: one cannot tolerate vsync issues. Want three monitors? - then one will tweak. There's no way we can "zero tweak" - unless you fly a default Piper Cub (not A2A's) over the Gobi desert with the S. Complexity and AG wound back.

 

"There is no miracle tweak, cure, OS tune-up or other fancy software-based solution for making FSX run better than it did on hardware at the time ACES released the SP2 version "

 

Of course there's no "Miracle Cure". Does John think we're all a bunch of dummies? The answer to FSX's woes (if you really want to get down to the nitty-gritty) is 1). a total re-write, and to get rid af the backward-compatibility that has hide-bound FSX since day one: and 2). get the best most modern high-end hardware. 

If we can't have the first - then we need the second.

According to Tom's pole, it's about 50/50 right now (DX9 vs. DX10) ... if a 3rd party dev wants to sell "more" product, it's in their best interest to make sure it's DX10 compatible.

 

I don't think it's developers not wanting to do it but that it's just not always possible without undoing what they've accomplished in DX9.

 

Hopefully Steve's patch will equalize things for the most part finally and this won't be an issue.

 

For example, if the only way to fix the lighting of Global in DX10 is to remove the way it's currently done, which results in excellent visuals and no FPS impact, and replace it with a more traditional halo method like UTX or the old FTX lighting that kills frames, then it's not worth it IMO.

 

DX10 is still broken code. Yeah, a lot has been done, but at it's core it still has issues that need to be sorted out. One being it's inablity to deal with alpha channels.

Bump.... any word/ETA on this? (Not an Orbx customer so I don't hang out at their forums.)

Orbx can't fix the dx10 problems with the lighting. Steve's dx10 fixer is supposed to, and it's been said he will offer a specific fix for the black squares problem outside of the fixer app. So, nothing on the orbx forum about this one way or another, since the problem is a dx10 problem. Orbx did post some screenies today from the upcoming 1.1 patch they are working on which makes the lights brighter, and apparently visible from further away. They said they are aiming for end of month on that, but it won't be of use for us dx10ers until the dx10 fixes are available from Steve.

It's not that ORBX can't fix the problem. It's that it is a problem with FSX DX10 shaders and they have deferred to someone who focuses solely on trying to make the Shader Model 4 work properly with the DX10 Preview Mode in FSX. In FSX, the shaders are modified using the "C-like" High Level Shading Language (HLSL). We should all be thankful that ACES didn't just compile this to binary, because without the HLSL source, no modifications would be possible. Open up one of the *.fx or *.fxh files with Notepad, and you will see why ORBX didn't feel like it was their job to mess around with the FSX shader code. They got enough grief for overwriting the FSX texture data and not providing an uninstaller with V1.0 of FTX-G (even though they did back up all the textures and it is a simple matter to undo what their installation did).

 

What is more exciting is that Shader Model 5 is what is used for DX11 and that is what Prepar3d 2.0 will use. Shader Model 5 incorporates CUDA (another C-like GPU programming language) calls, thus expanding the GPGPU functions of more recent GPUs.

 We should all be thankful that ACES didn't just compile this to binary, because without the HLSL source, no modifications would be possible.

 

Ain't that the truth!  :lol: 

So, no news then.

So, no news then.

All I can tell you is that it works.... And it is coming. Steve does not want to release something half baked. There is oodles of testing happening.

 

C.

It's not that ORBX can't fix the problem. It's that it is a problem with FSX DX10 shaders and they have deferred to someone who focuses solely on trying to make the Shader Model 4 work properly with the DX10 Preview Mode in FSX. In FSX, the shaders are modified using the "C-like" High Level Shading Language (HLSL). We should all be thankful that ACES didn't just compile this to binary, because without the HLSL source, no modifications would be possible. Open up one of the *.fx or *.fxh files with Notepad, and you will see why ORBX didn't feel like it was their job to mess around with the FSX shader code. They got enough grief for overwriting the FSX texture data and not providing an uninstaller with V1.0 of FTX-G (even though they did back up all the textures and it is a simple matter to undo what their installation did).

 

What is more exciting is that Shader Model 5 is what is used for DX11 and that is what Prepar3d 2.0 will use. Shader Model 5 incorporates CUDA (another C-like GPU programming language) calls, thus expanding the GPGPU functions of more recent GPUs.

Lol.

 

I guess, under that reasoning, "I" can fix the problem myself. Orbx can't fix it. They aren't shader geniuses, they make really good scenery and they are pretty adept at overcoming the scenery and autogen limits of fsx. I guess you are saying if they drop all their scenery work and focus on learning something they know nothing about for the next several years, then maybe they can fix it? Their Ceo apparently was very firmly under the impression that if he just made all the textures and lighting strictly under the terms of the SDK SP2. Then he would be fine for dx10. Obviously that wasn't the case. Waiting on Steve's fixes, but Orbx is no more capable of fixing the problems than they are of developing fs11 or the next NGX. Not their thing.

 

Looking forward to p3d v2 as well.

I don't know with absolute certainty, Shawn, but almost all of the scenery fixes that we've been testing, (not specifically pointing at Orbx) have been brought about because of old code useage, old methods and old familiar tools - and coding outside of the SDK.

One of the issues I've experienced with Orbx products while testing - and I may be quite wrong about this - is that there seems to be little, or no attempt, being made to standardize the coding practice among all of the various programmers. Perhaps some  members are great programmers, but lack FSX coding experience - I don't know - there can be any number of reasons for each of these individual issues: it's a problem that all large companies have, but it's exacerbated when most of the coders are spread across the Globe. The result is black boxes, black squares, solid black rectangles under aircraft, textures missing, building missing, transparent buildings, white aircraft, grey aircraft, aircraft that turn white once they begin to move, etc.. These are spread over all of the products, some being quite perfect, and others exhibiting one other other of those problems. The only common thing would be that most will have different authors.

If FSDT and SimAddons (for e.g.) programmers can produce perfectly DX10-compatible airports/airfields - then so can any other programmer. This may be difficult for the ever-growing large and diverse programmer population such that Orbx has, and I'm sure there is no-one peeping over the shoulders of the programmers as they work. I think all that matters is that it works in DX9 - that is the philosophy, and anything which we may find problematic becomes a 'fix' to be 'managed' and done down the road. Up 'til now - it's been manageable, but it's come to a bit of a head recently because of the great publicity and wide desirability to own - FTX Global and the lights, combined with the outcry from the absolutely unexpected number of DX10 users out there - thanks to Steve's patch!

 

It'll eventually all get ironed out, and as the Fixer enters the market - the pressure on the dev community will ease, and eventually disappear, taking DX9 with it! 

It'll eventually all get ironed out, and as the Fixer enters the market - the pressure on the dev community will ease, and eventually disappear, taking DX9 with it! 

... and that, my friends is the beauty of this entire process.  Bringing the necessary talent together to improve our hobby.  It's been amazing to watch.

That's what his plan was, all along, let others work on it, apply recent discovered fixes.....+1 for your last post Paul.

 

Question:

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• LocationMMMX

Posted 14 February 2013 - 05:04 PM

Hello

This probably was asked before, but couldn’t find it:

Will FTX Global be DX10 (“Preview”) compatible?

Thanks.

 

Answer:

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Posted 14 February 2013 - 05:06 PM

Yes it will, as long as you apply some of the recent DX10 fixes discovered on various forums. It will present exactly the same DX10 compatibility as default FSX does.

 

And your point is?

 

 

 

That's what his plan was, all along, let others work on it, apply recent discovered fixes.....+1 for your last post Paul.

 

Question:

• Members
• 358 posts

• LocationMMMX

Posted 14 February 2013 - 05:04 PM

Hello

This probably was asked before, but couldn’t find it:

Will FTX Global be DX10 (“Preview”) compatible?

Thanks.

 

Answer:

• Administrators

• 19,647 posts

Posted 14 February 2013 - 05:06 PM

Yes it will, as long as you apply some of the recent DX10 fixes discovered on various forums. It will present exactly the same DX10 compatibility as default FSX does.

 

 

And your point is?

Yes, they already acknowledged they made the New 3D lights a couple days before FTX Global release, and Yes, they also acknowledged they assumed that since they compiled with SDK SP2 those lights would be DX10 compatible. And Yes they also acknowledged they did not test those lights with DX10. And Yes, they also asked Steve for help in fixing it.

That was back in February, now it’s August.

 

Who cares how or who fixes it.  (I guess You do, since you won’t be buying the product)

 

 

And your point is?

 

 

 

My point is that peoples (some) thought that FTX-G was DX10 compatible out of the box as the OP mentioned it in his post, others were also under the impression that it was.

 

Quote: Posted 28 July 2013 - 01:43 AM

Just a heads up for those DX10 users that want to get the new Orbx FTX global textures that just came out. It was reported earlier that it was DX10 compatible but that does not appear to be the case for using the complete FTX Global (textures and new night lighting. People who have DX10 and purchased found that they get black dots during daylight in the squares where the night lighting is supposed to be. Buyer beware.  You've been warned." end of quote.

 

By posting your question and the answer from JV everybody can see that nowhere did he said that FTX-G was DX10 compatible without applying fixes (unless I missed a post somewhere and I would not mind to be corrected), was he talking about fixes that were not available at the time he made his post, again, I would not mind be corrected if I missed something?

 

Just keeping the facts straight, is it not what we are all looking for? That was my point.